NEW DELHI: CBI Director, Rishi Kumar Shukla today inaugurated the 1st National Conference on Cyber Crime Investigation and Cyber Forensics at CBI(HQ) in New Delhi. The two day conference being organised by CBI covers one of the mandates of CBI which is to investigate crimes with inter-state and international ramifications. Around 50 Officers including DGPs, ADGPs, IGPs, DIGPs and SPs dealing with cybercrime in State & UT Police, Central Agencies, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, other Ministries, experts from Law Enforcement Agencies(LEAs) and academia are participating in the Conference.

During the conference, several lectures, presentations and panel discussions on various topics/themes of law enforcement interest including, Mobile/Digital Forensics, Inter-LEA information/ intelligence exchange, obtaining digital evidence from abroad, online harming including child sexual abuse, Social Media, establishing standard formats for data exchange between service providers and LEAs, Intermediary liability, Admissibility of Electronic Evidence are being discussed in the deliberations.

In his inaugural address, Director CBI Rishi Kumar Shukla said that the conference is aimed at creating platform and bringing together investigators, lawyers, forensic experts and academia to discuss challenges related to cyber crime and ways to find solutions. It will also be a platform to share good practices to learn from experiences of various State police and Law Enforcement Agencies. Director, CBI emphasized that in the modern world, every sector- be it health, power, finance, water supply and infrastructure – all are digitized. While digitization has improved the quality of citizen services, it has also increased vulnerability in several folds.

Director, CBI said what is urgently needed are efforts to create capacity building and creation of a pool of competent investigators, digital forensic analysts, prosecutors and judicial officers who are digitally aware.

Elaborating further, Shukla said that cybercrimes posed unique challenges to law enforcement officers. Such crimes are complex and require certain skills and forensic skills for detection. Evidence is essentially volatile and digital evidence is located abroad. He noted that these crimes are truly borderless and, therefore, theories of traditional jurisdiction come under challenge while investigations are in progress. Director, CBI also said there is an urgent need for law enforcement agencies to equip themselves to fight these cyber criminals effectively and expeditiously in a coordinated manner.

Shukla also touched upon the issue of CBI requiring consent of State Governments under Section 6 of Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. He highlighted the dichotomous situation where CBI is unable to fulfil its mandate in investigating interstate crimes due to absence of consent of some State governments. Concluding his inaugural address, Director, CBI said that as India stands at the cusp of a digital revolution, law enforcement officers should focus on basics that will help keep cyber crimes under check and take effective deterrent action. With complexity of cyber crime increasing, the challenges before law enforcement agencies will only become more complex in the future.